Early Childhood Educational Programs
We call upon the federal, provincial, territorial, and Aboriginal governments to develop culturally appropriate early childhood education programs for Aboriginal families.
TRC, 2015 Final Report
Culturally Appropriate Programs
In order to preserve Indigenous culture and languages, it is so crucial to have quality and culturally appropriate educational programs. As the TRC Final Report shows, Residential Schools were a blatant attempt at assimilating Indigenous children by removing them from their families, forbidding them from learning about their cultures, and from speaking their languages. You can read more about that in detail here. In order to reconcile with these past events, the TRC recommends creating culturally appropriate early childhood educational programs that teach about Indigenous languages and culture.
It is important to teach Indigenous children about their culture and to teach them their native languages. This helps to preserve their cultural traditions and languages. However, it is essential to do this in a culturally appropriate way. Cultural appropriation happens when we try to teach about a culture that is not our own without doing so respectfully and in consultation with community members and leaders. If this goal was met, then the programs would have to be created through consultation with local Indigenous community leaders. Indigenous children should have the ability to learn from their community and family members about their history, culture, and languages.
Progress
In September 2018, the federal government released the Indigenous Early Learning and Child Care Framework, which is meant to “guide future investments and programming approaches in Indigenous early learning and child care, including for the federal government’s existing Indigenous Early Learning and Child Care programs”. They also reached out to Indigenous organizations to gather their insight and opinions about how to deliver culturally appropriate early educational programs.
As well, in the 2016 and 2017 federal budgets, the federal government promised $7.5 billion to create more child care across the country, with $360 million of that money dedicated to Indigenous child care centres and early educational learning centres.
There is still a lot of progress to be made, but this is a great start. It is not clear how the government will follow through with meeting this Call to Action in the following years, however it is promising to see that they have started and are working with Indigenous communities to do so.